The Minutes of Our Last Meeting | Archangel Alliance Committee on Human Affairs
The outdated Pearly Gates. The locks don't even work.
(Joe is currently at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. These Minutes were first published on July 11, 2018 and are sadly still pertinent today.)
Archangel Alliance
Committee on Human Affairs
Meeting time: afterlife, before lunch, the Tallahassee Room
Archangel Michael, chairbeing
In attendance: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Selaphiel, Raguel
and me, Dina. I took notes. Of course.
Michael: Okay, Everyone. Here they are. The plans.
Gabriel: Maybe I missed a meeting or two—
Michael: More than one or two—
Gabriel: They are plans for what, exactly?
Michael: The new gates. We have some of the best architects from earth up here and I had them bid on building new gates.
Gabriel: Those gates have been where they are for thousands of years. God made them—
Michael: We made them. God supervised.
Raphael: Does God know about these new plans?
Michael: Not yet. I wanted to get everyone’s eyes on the ones I picked and see what you think. He won’t care.
Uriel: We put in that gazebo without telling him and he acts like it’s always been there. Like it was his idea.
Michael: You could argue that in the big, cosmic swirl of things, he already knows about the new gates and these plans came from his divine inspiration.
Gabriel: You buy that horsehit?
Michael: If God has a problem with it, he won’t notice until it’s too late to do something about it.
Selaphiel: Like The Plague.
Raguel: Or promposals.
Gabriel: I still don’t know why you want to spruce up the pearly gates. They work fine.
Michael: Well, you answered your own question. Pearl is one of the worst elements you can use for gate building. They have been yellowing and cracking for centuries. Our gates have holes in them. People have been slipping through.
Gabriel: How is that even possible? There’s a line longer than Space Mountain that people have to stand in. They’re roped off. We have security guards to keep the line flowing.
Michael: People who know they are going to hell don’t wait in line to find out. If they get caught, so what? They were already on the way to hell. They have nothing to lose trying to come in here.
Uriel: There are people in heaven who don’t belong here? That explains that a-hole on the escalator who spent the whole time not moving, looking at his phone. There was no room to move around him. I cleared my throat several times. He needs to go back to where he came from.
Selaphiel: There are also people climbing through the gates with their family. They know they aren’t all going to heaven and they want to stay together.
Raguel: I get that. If they all died together, why let heaven split you apart? We should keep families together.
Gabriel: That would just be another form of hell for most people.
Uriel: Well, they can’t hide from us. They’re not angels. If they got in here illegally, they won’t have a halo.
Raphael: We can’t go around asking people to show us their halos.
Selaphiel: Why not? If they belong here, they have nothing to worry about.
Raphael: Asking people to see their halos creates a hostile environment. Very counter-heaven. God would be really pissed.
Michael: And that’s why we need new gates. Now, we had many great plans from famous artists. Frank Lloyd Wright’s looked cool but were just too low and predictable. I found a guy who specializes in what we are looking for. At least in his imagination.
(Michael unravels the blue prints, and everyone looks over his wings to see them.)
Gabriel: I’m confused.
Raphael: Is that supposed to be—
Michael: Galvanized razor and barbed wire across the top of the gates that are now 20-feet high.
Selaphiel: No one is going to even get by the 30-foot wide pit full of poisonous snakes, velociraptors, and lawn darts.
Michael: That’s only two things they must negotiate before they can step foot on heaven’s sacred ground.
Selaphiel: What are the yellow dots in front of the pit?
Michael: People in vests with clipboards who want to talk to them about giving to Planned Parenthood.
Gabriel: The guy who designed this? He’s one of ours?
Michael: Not really, no.
Raguel: Did you get Satan to do this for you?
Michael: No. I mean, I asked. He suggested lava and dismemberment and stressed that Hell would not pay for it. I had to go to earth for this.
Uriel: Thought I recognized his handiwork. What did you promise Stephen Miller?
Michael: Sushi everlasting. He’ll never have to leave home to get it. He wants it, we bring it. Instantly. That reminds me…Dina, I have a job for you.
Dina: That’s…just…great…
The New Pearly (steel and concrete) Gates. Hell will pay for it!